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Retroflex Processes and Their Phonetic Grounding

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Retroflex Processes and Their Phonetic Grounding 4 Retroflex processes and their phonetic grounding In this chapter, cross-linguistically very common phonological processes involving retroflex segments are discussed. These processes are: retroflexion in a rhotic context and in a back vowel context, de-retroflexion in a front vowel context (and in secondary palatalization) or retraction of the front vowel, retroflexion of velarized or labialized segments, retroflexion of vowels before retroflex segments, non- occurrence of retroflexes word-initially and post-consonantally, and (local and non- local) assimilation of non-retroflex coronals. They are represented in this order in .where t is a cover symbol for a [+anterior] coronal, and ֒ for a retroflex segment ,(1) C is any kind of consonant, V any kind of vowel, and (ω indicates the left boundary of a prosodic category higher than the syllable (phonological word, phrase boundary). The first column gives the inputs, the second the outputs, and the third gives these processes terms that I will continue to use in this and following chapters. (1) input output process a) /rt/ [֒] retroflexion in rhotic context) b) /ut/ [u֒] retroflexion in back vowel context) c) /i֒/ [it] or [᭣֒] deretroflexion or vowel retraction) or [֒] deretroflexion or depalatalization [ܕt] /ܕ֒/ ײ d) /V֒/ [V ֒] retroflexion of adjacent vowel) e) /֒/ (ω[t], C[t] phonotactic restrictions on retroflexes) f) /֒t/ [֒֒] local assimilation of retroflexes) Vt/ [֒V֒] non-local assimilation of retroflexes֒/ Bhat (1973) already described some of the processes in (1), namely the retroflexion of dentals or alveolars by a preceding /r/ (1a), by a preceding back vowel (1b), and a preceding retroflex consonant (1f). Retroflexion caused by implosion, another process elaborated by Bhat (p. 43), will not be treated here, as I want to restrict my investigations to normal egressive airflow. Two further processes of retroflexion that I found when collecting and analysing the data are not included in the descriptions below and the analysis in chapter 6: these are retroflexion via secondary velarization and via secondary rounding, see (2a) and (2b), respectively. retroflexion of velarized segments [֒] /ލa) /t) (2) retroflexion of labialized segments [֒] /ܦb) /t) These processes are phonetically motivated, since retroflexion via velarization is a type of articulatory assimilation if one assumes retroflexes to be inherently retracted, and retroflexion via rounding has obvious perceptual similarities between input and output, cf. section 4.3.2.4 on the rounding of vowels before retroflexes. Nevertheless, the two processes are not included here, because of the lack of clear 82 Chapter 4 supporting examples. Ponapean is the only language I found that might have introduced retroflexes via velarized alveolars, though the literature (Rehg 1973, Harrison 1995) is not very explicit on this point. Retroflexion via secondary ײ rounding seems to have been a diachronic process in Athapaskan; the affricate [֒ ] in Minto-Nenana originates from a rounded segment, though the actual realization of it is a topic of unclarity. Krauss (1973) describes the respective Proto-Athapaskan Ѐ segment as */kܦ/, Tharp (1972) refers to it as */tܦ/, and Rice as (1989) */t ܦ/. I leave the clarification of these data and the collection of further examples of both processes open for future research. Bhat (1973) found that rules of retroflexion are typically caused by a preceding non-retroflex sound or by the retroflexion spreading leftward, i.e. the expected order in the input is a non-retroflex followed by a retroflex segment. This will be shown to be a general tendency for the examples given in this chapter, but even so most of the phonological changes in (1) will be shown to occur also in reverse segmental order of input (and also output), namely the retroflexion in rhotic context (1a) and in back vowel context (1b), avoidance of front vowel context (1c), and assimilation processes (1f). Examples in the subsections below will illustrate this point. Not all of the processes have retroflex segments as outputs (as (1a), (1b), and (1f)); some of them have retroflexes as input (for instance, the process of de-retroflexion in (1c) and (1e)), others are only triggered by retroflexes (for instance, the vowel changes in (1c)). For each change in (1), evidence from several language families is given in order to show the universal validity of the process. This universality is argued to be based on the phonetic grounding of these processes, explained by the articulatory and acoustic characteristics of retroflexion as elaborated in chapters 2 and 3, respectively. The present chapter gives no phonological account of the processes involving retroflexes. The data collected here show general, recurring patterns that will be represented in the phonological formalizations of retroflexes in general in chapter 5 and of these processes specifically in chapter 6. The present chapter is structured as follows. Section 4.1 deals with retroflexion induced by rhotic segments (1a). In section 4.2, the retroflexion of coronals in back vowel context is discussed (1b), whereas section 4.3 deals with the opposite process, non-retroflexion in front vowel context (1c). Vowel retroflexion (1d) is the topic of section 4.4. In section 4.5, the phonotactic restrictions of retroflexes (1e) are discussed. Lastly, section 4.6 deals with local and non-local assimilations of retroflexes (1f). All of these sections are subdivided into two subsections, where the first presents the examples and the second gives the phonetic grounding of the process under discussion. Section 4.7 concludes. Before starting with the detailed discussion, a note on the transcription is necessary. In the examples throughout the chapter, the retroflexes are represented by their respective IPA symbols, which sometimes depart from their description in the original sources. I also transferred non-retroflex segments into respective IPA symbols if the sources used other transcriptional systems. Retroflex processes and their phonetic grounding 83 4.1 Retroflexion in rhotic context The first process to be discussed here is the change of an anterior coronal into a retroflex caused by a rhotic, as illustrated in (1a). This process can be found in North-Germanic languages, in Australian languages and Indo-Aryan languages. It is also diachronically attested in some of these languages, and is responsible for the introduction of retroflex phonemes into a number of languages, as illustrated below in 4.1.1. Section 4.1.2 will provide a possible explanation based on the acoustic characteristics of the segments involved in this process. 4.1.1 Examples Before examples of this process are given, one problem in its description has to be pointed out. Due to the lack of appropriate graphemes for retroflex sounds in Latin- based writing systems, different methods for representing these sounds are employed in languages with retroflex phonemes. One of them is to write a sequence of r plus t, d, s, n, l, or r. This is often found in the literature on Australian languages, see for example McKay (2000) on Ndjebbana.1 Such a transcription convention should not be confused with an underlying sequence of two phonemes, namely a rhotic and an alveolar or dental, which can be realized with one phoneme via a phonological contraction rule, as demonstrated below. The difference of these two representations is of particular importance for the North-Germanic languages Swedish and Norwegian, which are assumed to have a retroflex phoneme and a sandhi-process of retroflexion, both represented graphemically in the same way. In Norwegian,2 the so-called ‘retroflex rule’ merges clusters of apical alveolar plus all laminal dentals /t, d, s, n, l/ into corresponding /ײ/ r/3 or retroflex flap/ retroflexes across morpheme and word boundaries. Examples from Kristoffersen (2000: 96f.) are given in (3) (in Kristoffersen’s transcription). (3) input output of RR gloss Inflection /s᭳r-t/[s᭳⍧֒] surt ‘sour’AGR bar-n/[bϪ⍧׮] baren ‘bar’ DEF-SG/ Derivation /Єor-li/[Єo⍧.ևi] vårlig ‘spring-like’ brors ‘brother’ POSS [״u⍧שClitics /brur-s/[b ’!bær-n/[bæ⍧׮] bœr han ‘carry him/ ’Compounds /Єor-tejn/[Єo⍧.֒æjn] vårtegn ‘spring sign ’Ϫ⍧ց] vårdag ‘spring dayم.Єor-daց/[Єo⍧/ 1 Other systems employed to represent retroflexes in the literature on Australian languages are the usual grapheme for coronals (d, n, l, r) with a subscript dot or an underlining. A further option is to transcribe retroflexes with capital coronals, as used for example in the Dravidian language Kannada (Schiffman 1983, Sridhar 1990). 2 The term “Norwegian” is used here and below to cover the variety that is defined as urban East Norwegian speech, a notion explicated for example by Vanvik (1972, 1973), Endresen (1974), and Kristoffersen (2000). .(in Norwegian (Kristoffersen 2000: 24 [ש] The underlying apical alveolar /r/ is realized as a tap 3 84 Chapter 4 The geographical domain of the retroflex rule does not hold for the whole of Norway, but extends only over the eastern part of South Norway all the way up north to the Russian border (Kristoffersen 2000: 88). This area coincides with that of the spread of the apical rhotic, which led some scholars, such as Torp (2001), to propose that retroflexion can only occur with coronal /r/, whereas the uvular /௎/, which is used in the remaining part of the country, blocks retroflexion. Swedish has a similar rule of retroflexion, which is sometimes called post- alveolarization or supradentalization (Eliasson 1986: 278). Examples of this process are given in (4) (in Eliasson’s transcription). (4) input output gloss Inflection /før−t/ [fœ+⍧֒] fört ‘brought’ SUP förs ‘is brought’ PASS [״før−s/[fœ+⍧/ ’Derivation /før−tal/[fœ+⎆֒Ϫ⍧l] förtal ‘slander ’ѐrj] försorg ‘taking care״⎆+før−sorj/[fœ/ ’Compounds /før−tѝr/[⎆fœ+⍧⎅֒ѝ⍧r] förtur ‘priority ’Ϫ⍧l] försal ‘entrance hall״⎅før−sal/[⎆fœ+⍧/ ’Across words /før tѝn⍧/[fœ+⎆֒᭫n⍧] för tunn ‘too thin ’e⍧n] för sen ‘too late״⎆+før sen/[fœ/ According to Eliasson (1986: 282), the sandhi rule of retroflexion in Swedish is sensitive to the type of boundary between the /r/ and the dental.
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